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Not much news and a few reviews
Nov. 27th, 2020 06:37 pmAs predicted, Thanksgiving consisted of doing as little as possible with as few as possible. A friend dropped off a couple of desserts- which have yet to be broken into because Eleanor made a yummy pumpkin-chocolate-cheesecake pie- but that was the extent of the heavy duty food prep. Chicken in Indian butter sauce, new potatoes, brussel sprouts, and naan bread- continuing a long tradition for this holiday I don't even remember the origin of. We have no other family here, so we've never done the Big Holiday Production for more than a stray relative, but one year in elementary school, the kid was asked to bring in "your family's favorite Thanksgiving dish." Again, no recollection of how we settled on it, but we would up ordering some biryani rice from a local Indian joint, and continued to pick up a side of it for ourselves for years.
One reason for the lower-keying is that Eleanor spent most of Thanksgiving morning in pretty excruciating pain. That was the inevitable result of her wrangling other people's turkeys out of and/or into their shopping carts, despite signs telling people not to put them on the belt. Even those who followed the rule often had to have their birds uplifted anyway because their barcodes weren't reading properly and had to be brought closer to the scanner. It was so bad at one point that I had to open all of her prescription/vitamin/supplement bottles (now appreciating that the four I deal with every morning are a fraction of what she has to take). But after a good bombing of ibuprofen, a hot bath and a nap. the afternoon and the piemaking went much better- and she's been in better shape today, although she did stick to calling in from a Black Friday at work.
I wound up doing all the limited shopping we needed today, passing this place, which you'd only find in Buffalo or perhaps Kraków on the day after Thanksgiving-
----
I was also away from the office the past two days, and most of our waking hours were spent watching various things. I began my binge with a documentary that came up as "recommended for you"-
Fantastic Four was one of my early Saturday morning cartoon intros to the Marvel not-yet-Cinematic universe in the 60s, along with Spiderman, which ran nightly on Channel 5 with the earwormy theme music still used in the MCU, and the five other supes who rotated on Channel 9 weeknights- Captain America on Mondays, Hulk on Tuesdays, followed by Iron Man, Thor (on Thursdays, of course) and Submariner. The FF animation was lame, one of the few comic book franchises to come out of Hanna-Barbera; and the stories were typical Saturday morning sugary- but I cut my newly arriving adult teeth on Ben announcing "It's clobberin' time!" and Johnny the Human Torch invoking his power with a cry of "Flame on!" A later 70's cartoon version replaced Johnny with a robot, supposedly over rights issues but just as likely from all the kids who tried flicking their Dads' Bics to turn into superhero flambé themselves.
"Rights issues" also kept the Four from joining the rest of the Lee-Kirby creations once Marvel and eventually Disney started throwing tons of money into their "universe." A couple of efforts were made this century with fairly A-list casts, but they never got the buzz of the Spidey or X-Men or Avenger efforts that turned into the current MCU. What I never knew when those Four adaptations were trying and flailing, but did learn before this documentary just came out, is that there was a duly authorized Marvel film adaptation of the Fantastic Four that was made mostly in 1993 and produced by legendary B-movie cheap schlockmeister Roger Corman.
I knew about it because I own it:
It's a bootleg that's been floating around dealer rooms at sci-fi conventions for ages; at probably my last Shore Leave in Maryland or maybe the last-ever ReGeneration WHO, I saw the box and the Corman reference on it, read the brief history of it on the back, and took it home. It's cheap and cheesy, but the much-better-done documentary makes very clear that it wasn't the fault of the actors, director, screenwriter or any of the crew. Many of them went above and beyond finishing or promoting the film on their own time and/or with their own money once Corman's budget ran out. (He only has a few brief cameos in the piece; and Stan Lee, and the Marvel exec who allegedly kiboshed the thing, refused to be interviewed for it.)
The whole thing turned out to be a time-marking effort for a rights-holder to get another extended option on using the characters- whether the film was ever actually released or not. Only problem was, nobody told the cast, or the public, which showed up in droves at cons to see these guys and which made the bootlegs legendary enough for Prime to make a making-of of it that's as long as the film itself.
I remember watching some of it when I got home, and giving up on it. Now, though, I want to finish watching, knowing what I now know of how hard these guys tried with what little they had to work with. The whole film is available here, at least for now.
----
Other things we've caught up on or begun:
- Just the one final season of Schitt's Creek to go;
- Yesterday, we got caught up with Mandolorian, although I think a new one dropped today; Baby Yoda did a little dropping of his own in the last one;)
- We also watched Ron Howard's latest direct-to-stream titled Hillbilly Elegy; Amy Adams and especially Glenn Close do amazing jobs becoming their characters, and the rest of the cast does the source material proud as well;
- Followed those with a surprising-for-us Christmassy series titled Dash and Lily, about two late teens of opposite feels about the holiday who somehow connect in pre-COVID Manhattan, mainly in the shelves of the Strand bookstore;
- And somehow I missed that Star Trek: Discovery started its third season last month and is seven episodes in; I binged the first three of them during the day today and think I am caught up with the basics of who, where and when is-all going on in it.
----
Two more days of the extended weekend. One past that of November. Thirty-one more to kill off 2020, and then twenty until we can all say
One reason for the lower-keying is that Eleanor spent most of Thanksgiving morning in pretty excruciating pain. That was the inevitable result of her wrangling other people's turkeys out of and/or into their shopping carts, despite signs telling people not to put them on the belt. Even those who followed the rule often had to have their birds uplifted anyway because their barcodes weren't reading properly and had to be brought closer to the scanner. It was so bad at one point that I had to open all of her prescription/vitamin/supplement bottles (now appreciating that the four I deal with every morning are a fraction of what she has to take). But after a good bombing of ibuprofen, a hot bath and a nap. the afternoon and the piemaking went much better- and she's been in better shape today, although she did stick to calling in from a Black Friday at work.
I wound up doing all the limited shopping we needed today, passing this place, which you'd only find in Buffalo or perhaps Kraków on the day after Thanksgiving-
----
I was also away from the office the past two days, and most of our waking hours were spent watching various things. I began my binge with a documentary that came up as "recommended for you"-
Fantastic Four was one of my early Saturday morning cartoon intros to the Marvel not-yet-Cinematic universe in the 60s, along with Spiderman, which ran nightly on Channel 5 with the earwormy theme music still used in the MCU, and the five other supes who rotated on Channel 9 weeknights- Captain America on Mondays, Hulk on Tuesdays, followed by Iron Man, Thor (on Thursdays, of course) and Submariner. The FF animation was lame, one of the few comic book franchises to come out of Hanna-Barbera; and the stories were typical Saturday morning sugary- but I cut my newly arriving adult teeth on Ben announcing "It's clobberin' time!" and Johnny the Human Torch invoking his power with a cry of "Flame on!" A later 70's cartoon version replaced Johnny with a robot, supposedly over rights issues but just as likely from all the kids who tried flicking their Dads' Bics to turn into superhero flambé themselves.
"Rights issues" also kept the Four from joining the rest of the Lee-Kirby creations once Marvel and eventually Disney started throwing tons of money into their "universe." A couple of efforts were made this century with fairly A-list casts, but they never got the buzz of the Spidey or X-Men or Avenger efforts that turned into the current MCU. What I never knew when those Four adaptations were trying and flailing, but did learn before this documentary just came out, is that there was a duly authorized Marvel film adaptation of the Fantastic Four that was made mostly in 1993 and produced by legendary B-movie cheap schlockmeister Roger Corman.
I knew about it because I own it:
It's a bootleg that's been floating around dealer rooms at sci-fi conventions for ages; at probably my last Shore Leave in Maryland or maybe the last-ever ReGeneration WHO, I saw the box and the Corman reference on it, read the brief history of it on the back, and took it home. It's cheap and cheesy, but the much-better-done documentary makes very clear that it wasn't the fault of the actors, director, screenwriter or any of the crew. Many of them went above and beyond finishing or promoting the film on their own time and/or with their own money once Corman's budget ran out. (He only has a few brief cameos in the piece; and Stan Lee, and the Marvel exec who allegedly kiboshed the thing, refused to be interviewed for it.)
The whole thing turned out to be a time-marking effort for a rights-holder to get another extended option on using the characters- whether the film was ever actually released or not. Only problem was, nobody told the cast, or the public, which showed up in droves at cons to see these guys and which made the bootlegs legendary enough for Prime to make a making-of of it that's as long as the film itself.
I remember watching some of it when I got home, and giving up on it. Now, though, I want to finish watching, knowing what I now know of how hard these guys tried with what little they had to work with. The whole film is available here, at least for now.
----
Other things we've caught up on or begun:
- Just the one final season of Schitt's Creek to go;
- Yesterday, we got caught up with Mandolorian, although I think a new one dropped today; Baby Yoda did a little dropping of his own in the last one;)
- We also watched Ron Howard's latest direct-to-stream titled Hillbilly Elegy; Amy Adams and especially Glenn Close do amazing jobs becoming their characters, and the rest of the cast does the source material proud as well;
- Followed those with a surprising-for-us Christmassy series titled Dash and Lily, about two late teens of opposite feels about the holiday who somehow connect in pre-COVID Manhattan, mainly in the shelves of the Strand bookstore;
- And somehow I missed that Star Trek: Discovery started its third season last month and is seven episodes in; I binged the first three of them during the day today and think I am caught up with the basics of who, where and when is-all going on in it.
----
Two more days of the extended weekend. One past that of November. Thirty-one more to kill off 2020, and then twenty until we can all say